Qiu Ju da guan si (The Story of Qiu Zhu)

Professor Frank Upham has this to say:

"The Story of Qiu Zhu is about the normative confusion caused when state law penetrates customary society, and specifically how a young wife, Qiu Zhu, tries to use law to get justice. Instead, she gets law and the movie is about the difference. It is set in a remote agricultural village in China at the time (1992) of the passage of the Administrative Litigation Law, which allowed citizens to sue officials for malfeasance. The village secretary and Qiu Zhu's husband have a fight, and the former injures the latter in a sensitive area of his body that affects him not only physically but as a matter of honor. Qiu Zhu takes it upon herself to get justice for her husband, first trying informal means, but eventually turning to the formal legal system. It is a great movie for those interested in law and development, law and culture, and modernization in general. It is also a very good movie - perhaps Zhang Yimo's best."

Dormant, not Dead! And some movies

We will be back. Soon.

Meanwhile, some films currently playing in theatres:

Rendition
Egyptian man, suspected of terrorism, disappears on his way to Washington DC. A CIA agent is tasked with conducting an 'unorthodox interrogation' in a secret detention facility...

The Kingdom
A terrorist bomb detonates inside a western housing compound in Saudi Arabia igniting an international incident. While diplomats slowly debate equations of territorialism, a Special Agent from FBI negotiates a secret five-day trip to locate the culprit. While Saudi authorities in general are not pleased with the 'interference', a like-minded Saudi colonel helps them find their way to an extremist cell bent on further destruction...

Total Denial
Tells the story of a pipeline built by two oil companies, Total and Unocal in Burma, that formed the basis for the historic Doe v. Unocal lawsuit in which fifteen indigenous people successfully sued two corporate giants in the U.S. courts for complicity in forced labor, assaults, rape and other human rights abuses.

O Jerusalem
Based on the book of the same name by Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins which seeks to capture the events surrounding the creation of the modern state of Israel.

Terror's Advocate (L'Avocat de la terreur)
The story of Jacques Vergès, the lawyer who has defended some of the most controversial figures of the 20th century - from anti-colonial bombers in Algeria, to left-wing extremists like Carlos the Jackal, to right-wing dictators like Slobodan Milošević. One of his his most infamous clients the Nazi, was Klaus Barbie. Vergès also defended Djamila Bouhired, the woman who planted the bomb at the Milk Bar, an incident famously dramatized in the The Battle of Algiers. See here for more details...

Meeting Resistance
A documentary on the Iraq War from the perspective of Iraqis resisting military occupation of their country. For more see here.

Banished

The documentary revisits three of the communities that forcibly expelled their entire African American populations in the period between the end of the Civil War and the Great Depression. See here for more.

Please note, this post does not touch upon the quality f any of these films, although some of them are extremely interesting.

Hotel Rwanda

Hotel Rwanda tells the story of Paul Rusesabagina, who played an instrumental role in saving the lives of more than a thousand Tutsis during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

Rusesabagina, a Hutu, was an Assistant Manager at des Mille Collines, a luxury 4-star hotel. He was married to a Tutsi woman, Tatiana and lived in a predominantly Tutsi colony. With the death of Habariyama, the Hutus led by the Interahamwe commenced attack upon the Tutsis, and Rusesabagina, who had initially been concerned only with the safety of his own family, found himself sheltering his friends and neighbors as well. He decided to move them into the hotel, which housed many foreigners including humanitarian personnel and journalists, played host to important Rwandan officials, and was under the protection of the UNAMIR peacekeepers.

The Hotel became a place of refuge for other Tutsis as well, despite the shattering of the initial expectation that it would be further secured by armed personnel sent by the United Nations. Troops arrived only to escort the foreigners out of the country, leaving the Rwandan refugees behind. The UN and the international community, with the exception of the UNAMIR peacekeepers just turned a blind eye on the genocide.

It thus fell to the few UNAMIR personnel– who as peace-keepers, were not allowed to use force except in self-defense; and to Rusesabagina whose Hutu identity provided little protection as he was branded a traitor to the Hutu community for sheltering Tutsis, and indeed on one occasion his wife was severely beaten “for his crimes” and would have been killed had the UN peacekeepers not intervened.

Rusesabagina staved off the many Hutu attacks upon his person, his family and friends and the hotel premises with an arsenal composed of diplomatic skills, contacts among influential Rwandans and a stock of fine scotch whisky to use as bribes. Finally the UNAMIR was able to arrange for a deal whereby the Hutus would exchange their prisoners for those held by the Tutsis and Rusesabagina was able to retreat behind the lines of the Tutsi army, the Rwanda Protection Force, with his family, friends, hotel staff and others.

Rusesabagina was honoured for his courage and heroism with the US Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005.

The film captures this tale very effectively, and succeeds in providing an emphatic, though understated window into the horrors of the genocide. In its two hours playing time it sketches the movement from apprehension to despair as the characters move from bewilderment at the reports of Habariyama’s killing, to hope that they will be saved by timely foreign assistance to the growing certainty of their own death. Indeed this translation is most poignant in the scene where the refugees discover that the armed UN troops have come to evacuate only the foreign guests.

Furthermore it avoids portraying the Tutis as objects of pity – indeed what comes out most clearly is their resourcefulness in face of imminent death and their contempt for the West which has failed to assist them. In one marvelous scene Rusesabagina suggests that they call up their connections in Western countries and bid them good bye in an effort to shame them into acting – the image you are thus left with is thus of ordinary people reaching out to other ordinary people, not piteous victims looking towards resplendent saviors of the world.

The film also attempts to place provide the context for the violence, it lays out the background for the ethnic divisions between the Hutus and Tutsis. While the period of focus does not extend to the aftermath of this genocide – the coming into power of the Tutsi government and the Tutsi reprisals against Hutu refugees in Congo are not touched upon, it does address the foregoing period where Hutu citizens are exhorted by the government to make common cause against Tutsis who are characterized as rebels and rogues. The incendiary speeches made through the Radio Liberty, the Interhamwe rallies etc are showcased.

The film speaks for itself and it makes its points very effectively. Amnesty International has endorsed the movie, in the hope that it troubles its audience out of indifference towards other such situations and has designed a specific model for a Hotel Rwanda Houseparty to ensure wider viewer-ship of the film and the issues it raises in the hope that this will draw attention to the genocide in Darfur.

A Few Good Men

Adapted from a play of the same name by Alan Sorkin, A Few Good Men follows the efforts of a team of lawyers defending two Marines accused of murdering a colleague at a US military base. The defense discovers that the death was the result of a ‘Code Red’ – illegal corporal punishment meted out to a soldier in need of discipline – administered upon the order of a senior officer.

This brings up a question of great relevance to international criminal law – what weight to attach to a defense of “superior orders” when these are claimed as the basis for action by a soldier. On the one hand a soldier’s duty to the military is considered paramount – the code for Marines is “Unit, Corps, God, Country”; at the same time, as a human being, he cannot be exempt from the moral duty to differentiate between right and wrong.

How to decide which of these duties must take precedence, has never been easy. Lhasa Oppenheim’s work is illustrative of this dilemma. In the first edition (1906) of his treatise on international law, he wrote “If members of the armed forces commit violations by order of their Government, they are no war criminals and cannot be punished by the enemy….”. In the sixth edition (1935) however, having witnessed the horrors of the first World War, he stated “The fact that a rule of warfare has been violated in pursuance of an order of the belligerent Government or of an individual belligerent commander does not deprive the act in question of its character as a war crime…[M]embers of the armed forces are bound to obey lawful orders only….”[1]

Indeed the film chooses to set this question against a more complicated backdrop than a situation of outright war would provide. The US military base is located in Guantanamo Bay, the situation with Cuba is tense, and the marines are on the alert throughout. Just a few days before these developments, there was unauthorized firing between a Cuban and an American soldier. Thus without being ‘at war’, the Base is always in readiness for an attack and a cadet lacking discipline is unacceptable. It is to the credit of the film makers and Sorkin that they bring out all these nuances, but do not refrain from choosing one course of action as the correct one, with some excellent dialogue explaining why.

The various sub-plots of the film provide several other interesting points to ponder over:

• The ethics of plea-bargaining – as Sgt Galloway ridicules Lt Kaffee for his conclusion of 44 cases in nine months through this device, and is herself dismissed as a spurious trial lawyer because of ‘too much passion and no street-smarts’;
• The conflicts of jurisdiction between different departments of the same organization reflected through the initial tussle between Sgt Galloway, Office of Internal Affairs and Lt Kaffee (JAG Corps.) for control over the case;
• The status of women in the military – indeed A Few Good Men has too few women of any significance, and the only one - Galloway - finds herself dismissed or ridiculed throughout. In fact, the script assigns most major faux pas to her character; and
• The problems of hierarchy that may interfere with a military court martial – as a Lieutenant, it is a major step for Kaffee to build up a case against seniors in the army.

An issue which resonates throughout the film is that of the power of the phrase “national security”. In this film, made just after the end of the cold war, “national security” has an emotional pull and the military is not just a profession, but endowed with a special sanctity. This is articulated at different points in the movie by various characters. It is most poignant in the bewilderment of a senior marine who truly believes that the nature of the service he performs puts him above the rules in his execution of it, and who upon interrogation can only respond: ‘I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it. I'd prefer you just said thank you and went on your way.’

Despite the fact that the Code Red was administered to a marine, not a terrorist, the parallels with the post 9/11 America and the debate over the legality of the manner in which the war on terror is being conducted are evident.

[1] Christopher Henson, Superior Orders and Duress as Defenses in International Law and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia,
http://www.unt.edu/honors/eaglefeather/2004_Issue/HensonC4.shtml.
Now, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court provides a test: “The fact that a crime within the jurisdiction of the Court has been committed by a person pursuant to an order of a Government or of a superior, whether military or civilian, shall not relieve that person of criminal responsibility unless: (a) The person was under a legal obligation to obey orders of the Government or the superior in question; (b) The person did not know that the order was unlawful; and (c) The order was not manifestly unlawful.”